General

Why “Che” tanked and other stories

While Steven Soderbergh was making Che, the stories leaking out about the on-set goings on made it sound like the poor fellow had met his Don Quixote Apocalypse Now Medellin. In an interview with the Guardian, he more or less admits it was a disaster from the first day:

“You know, for a year after we finished shooting I would still wake up in the morning thinking, ‘Thank God I’m not shooting that film.'”

Does he wish he hadn’t done it?

“Yeah.”

The sad part is, that Soderbergh himself doesn’t really seem to know why he made the film in the first place – he appears to have been somewhat bullied into it by Benicio del Toro. And in an interview he gave with the Globe and Mail when the film was first released, he claimed that he was “agnostic” on Che’s politics, but that he was “just compelled by the fact that he twice gave up everything and put his ass on the line for someone else’s benefit.” Which is a strange reason to make a film about such a controversial figure, to say the least.

Anyway, the interview goes on and gets weirder. Soderbergh blames piracy for the film’s poor showing, and says that he only has a few films left in him, one of which is a biopic of Liberace starring…. Michael Douglas.

I’m not convinced the writer wasn’t being punk’d.

Anyway, did anyone here actually see Che? I tried to go three times, felt sort of obliged to see it. But ultimately, life is just too short.

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